Starbucks PR Chief Quits Twitter Over #RaceTogether Campaign

Did they not see this coming?

Today in Wow, We Saw This Coming news, Howard Schultz of Starbucks made lots of headlines last night and this morning by announcing that he would encourage his own employees to discuss one of our nation’s most intractable political issues: race relations.

With their customers, no less.

The #RaceTogether tag first appeared last week via Starbucks Central Division SVP Joe Thornton, and no one protested:

Beginning with yesterday’s announcement, however, Twitter did not take kindly to the campaign. As one can see, Starbucks SVP of Global Communications Corey duBrowa did not want to answer the many, many questions that other users began sending his way:

I love that @coreydu expects his underpaid baristas to handle discussions on race but blocks anyone who asks him a question about it. — Alex (@ImYourDM) March 17, 2015

As duBrowa told Business Insider today, he deleted his account after receiving more than his share of “personal attacks” but plans to be “back on Twitter soon” to prove that someone else in the world shares our love of mid-90’s indie rock.

Now he knows how certain journalists feel every single day.

While we presume that many of those “attacks” were extremely unpleasant, quite a few came from people unhappy with the patronizing nature of the campaign.

In the meantime, while we all wait for Schultz to weigh in on the Israeli elections, here are some of the funnier responses: